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Manhattan Baby was a film that no one wanted to make. And it shows. Fabrizio DeAngelis forced the project to go on to cash in on the Exorcist and it's a very 'meh' picture with one or two good moments, a nice dark ending, and a few (very few) original bits of original music by Fabio Frizzi that's among his best.

This lead to Fulci walking away from DeAngelis, making Murderrock and Conquest, both projects flopped and Fulci fell into a diabetic coma for a while.

Fulci said Conquest was a big hit in Mexico. Conquest is a definite guilty pleasure of mine, a lot to enjoy. Wookies fighting cavemen armed with stone nunchucks, psychedelic visuals. gore, a topless Euro babe with a silver mask, an interesting twist at the end, zombies and spider people.

Fun flick. It's probably the best of the Conan ripoffs from that time. Either that or Beastmaster or Deathstalker 2.

Oh yeah, Alex, so much good cheese in there. Those furry nunchucks and the poor actors in those werewolf/Wookie costumes. But it's the soft focus really puts me off. A sequence or two, sure. But the whole movie!?

I like Manhattan Baby. I've probably said this before here but I think if anything holds it back its that the overwhelming sense of apocalypse that defined films like City of the Living Dead and The Beyond are missing from it. Sure the ending is nice and ominous but for the majority of the film the curse affects just the one family rather than a "today New York, tomorrow the world!" type of feeling. The same thing happened with Demonia where the threat of the nuns was isolated to the one village. Its a minor quibble for me though. I think the film still has plenty of the Fulci irrationality making it a wonderfully surreal watch. The scene where the sons bedroom turns into a desert landscape is brilliantly executed, the bird attack is tons of fun and the main theme is excellent. Death/doom metal band Hooded Menace do a great cover of it.

Oh yeah, Alex, so much good cheese in there. Those furry nunchucks and the poor actors in those werewolf/Wookie costumes. But it's the soft focus really puts me off.

I think the 'soft focus' look was achieved with a gauze over the lens. Like Alex said, it's a cheap way of establishing a 'fantasy' look that seemed to appear in a number of films of that era, as I recall.

I know CONQUEST has its detractors but I like it a lot. I remember years ago, before the DVD was released, I used our old screening room (kitted out with a at-the-time snazzy digital projector, punchy sound system and a big screen) at work to project my old VHS release. The film's quite an experience on the big screen with its dreamlike visuals and bizarre narrative (I'd love to see a 35mm print), but it doesn't quite work so well when watched in a domestic setting, imo.

'You know, I'd almost forgotten what your eyes looked like. Still the same. Pissholes in the snow'

conquest plays out like a video game with different levels! first the hero fights swamp zombies, after that some furry wookies in the mountains, on the way he receives the magic bow and finally faces the endboss: a nude snake woman with a golden mask!